In the past few years there has been an increasing appreciation of hydrogen apart from its traditional chemical uses. Hydrogen is now seriously being considered for gas compression, solar heat storage, heating and refrigeration, utility peak load sharing, electrochemical energy storage, and as fuel for internal combustion engines.
Heretofore, the art has relied on mechanical compressors which tend to be noisy and wear out quickly because of high speed operation and difficulty with lubrication. There have been attempts in devising non-mechanical hydrogen compressors. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,200,144, 4,188,795 and 3,704,600. Moreover, I am the co-inventor of a compressor set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 4,402,187. Additional hydrogen compressor designs may be found in "Molecular Absorption Cryogenic Cooler for Liquid Hydrogen Propulsion Systems" by G. A. Klein and J. A. Jones, pages 1-6, AIAA/ASME 3rd Joint Thermophysics Fluids, Plasma and Heat Transfer Conference, June 7-11, 1982, St. Louis, MO (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, New York, NY) and "Use of Vanadium Dihydride for Production of High-Pressure Hydrogen Gas", by D. H. W. Casters and W. R. David, pages 667-674, Met. Hydrogen Syst. Proceedings, Miami, International Symposium, 1982.
In particular, I was faced with the problem of compressing hydrogen gas on a relatively small economic scale, yet still delivering acceptable pressures (500 psig [3.45 MPa]) and delivery rates (1800 ml/minute).